A thought-provoking relationship tale with an edge. The relationships on offer here explore the nature of family, friends and colleagues, as well as love. While revenge headlines, this is a novel that focuses on empathy and compassion. Surgeon Rachel finds her world is turned upside down when she is targeted by a vengeful mother. This is very much a novel of two halves with author S. L. Russell ensuring tension kept intrigue company before leaving speculation and hope to take their place. The story grew on me, as did Rachel, and I felt this was a very deliberate decision taken by the author. There is an element of faith in this novel, I am not at all religious and was quite content and interested by the direction it took. The Healing Knife really is the most perfectly chosen title for a stimulating and thoughtful novel.
To Rachel Keyte death is the enemy. The early loss of her beloved father from heart failure ignited a single-minded determination in her: to save as many patients as she can, and to become a consultant before the age of forty.
Everything else - friendship, love, empathy - is sacrificed to her obsession. Now Rachel's surgical skills are twelve-year-old Craig's only hope for a normal life.
His mother Eve holds a deep distrust of doctors, and her son is all she has.
Reluctantly, she agrees for the operation to go ahead.
But surgery is never predictable, nor is a devastated mother's terrifying reaction.
Sue Russell spent the longest span of her working life teaching children with learning difficulties, following a PGCE at Cambridge and two years teaching English at the National Institute of Sciences in Indonesia. Now retired, Sue has more time to give to writing, though she has been making up stories since she was very small. The Healing Knife is Sue's seventh novel.
